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Landslides triggered by the 20 April 2013 Lushan, China, Mw 6.6 earthquake from field investigations and preliminary analyses

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Abstract

On April 20, 2013, a Mw 6.6 earthquake struck Lushan County of Sichuan Province, China, about 80 km southwest of the epicenter of the 12 May 2008 Wenchuan Mw 7.9 event. It triggered a large number of landslides in a broad area, causing causality and injuries and damages to roads, drains, dwellings, and infrastructures. Field investigations of coseismic landslides provide a basis for better understanding and illustrating the spatial distributions and hazards related to the Lushan earthquake-triggered landslides. Therefore, this paper presents results of field investigations of the Lushan earthquake-triggered landslides, which can be classified into two main categories of disrupted landslides and coherent landslides, and constitutes seven types. The disrupted landslides include five types: rock falls, rock slides, rock avalanches, soil falls, and soil slides; and the coherent landslides have two types: soil slumps and slow earth flows. All of the seven types of landslides can be observed in many field photos, aerial photographs, and/or satellite images. Among them, seven typical large-scale landslides, distributed in a northeast trending line consistent with the Shuangshi-Dachuan fault, which is presumably related with the earthquake, are described in detail. We prepared an original, emergency-based coseismic landslide inventory map based on visual interpretation of available post-earthquake aerial photographs and pre-earthquake satellite images, combined with results from emergency-based field investigations. The original inventory map registered 3884 landslides. Later, 11,761 more landslides were identified by much more careful and time-consuming visual interpretation based on the same aerial photographs and satellite images. Subsequently, all the 15,645 coseismic landslides were correlated with six common landslide impact factors, including elevation, slope angle, slope aspect, topographic position, stratum/lithology, and peak ground accumulation (PGA). These observational and compiled coseismic landslide data allow us to make subsequent compiling of a detailed and completed landslide inventory by visual interpretation of remote sensing images as well as further studies of landslides induced by the Lushan earthquake.

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Acknowledgments

The team members of the emergent field investigations include Xiwei Xu, Zhujun Han, Chuanyou Li, Zhiqiang Li, Guiwu Su, Wenjun Zheng, Guihua Chen, Zhikun Ren, Chong Xu, Zhanyu Wei, Xibin Tan, Hu Wang, and Mingming Wang. The authors thank other group members for their helps in the field. We are also grateful to the Institute of Remote Sensing and Digital Earth, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Sichuan Bureau of Surveying, Mapping and Geoinformation, and Institute of Optics and Electronics, Chinese Academy of Sciences for providing high-resolution post-earthquake aerial photographs. Comments and suggestions from Y.P. Yin and other anonymous reviewers significantly improved this manuscript. This research was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (41472202, 41202235, 91214201), the National Science Council (NSC) of Taiwan (NSC 102-2811-M-002-063 and 102-2628-M-002-007-MY3 to J.B.H.S.), the Basic Scientific Fund of the Institute of Geology, China Earthquake Administration (IGCEA1215, IGCEA1302), and the Project of the China Earthquake Administration “Scientific Investigations on the 20 April 2013 Lushan, Sichuan Earthquake”.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Key Laboratory of Active Tectonics and Volcano, Institute of Geology, China Earthquake Administration, Beijing, 100029, China

    Chong Xu, Xiwei Xu, Xibin Tan & Yongkang Ran

  2. Department of Geosciences, National Taiwan University, Taipei, 10617, Taiwan

    Chong Xu & J. Bruce H. Shyu

  3. Earth Observatory of Singapore, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, 639798, Singapore

    Mingxing Gao

  4. State Key Laboratory of Earthquake Dynamics, Institute of Geology, China Earthquake Administration, Beijing, 100029, China

    Wenjun Zheng

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  1. Chong Xu
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  2. Xiwei Xu
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  4. Mingxing Gao
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  5. Xibin Tan
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Correspondence to Chong Xu.

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Highlights

1. Results of on-site investigations were presented, and seven landslide types were categorized;

2. The characteristics of seven typical large-scale landslide cases were presented;

3. A preliminary emergency-based landslide inventory and a carefully mapped inventory, although incomplete, were presented and compared;

4. The characteristics of landslides triggered by the 2008 Wenchuan, 2010 Yushu, and 2013 Lushan earthquakes were preliminarily compared.

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Xu, C., Xu, X., Shyu, J.B.H. et al. Landslides triggered by the 20 April 2013 Lushan, China, Mw 6.6 earthquake from field investigations and preliminary analyses. Landslides 12, 365–385 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10346-014-0546-1

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